Mueller and 'Gentleman's Guide' take top Tonys

In a victory for the well-crafted, the droll and the picaresque, the sleeper and financially struggling Broadway show “A Gentleman Guide to Love & Murder” won the Tony Award on Sunday night for best new musical, beating out the very popular “Beautiful - The Carole King Musical.” Although Robert Freedman won for best book for a musical, and Darko Tresnjak took the Tony for best director (the show won four in all), no gentleman could defeat Jessie Mueller and her humble-but-transcendent Broadway performance as the young Carole King, the pop-music great who would rather have gone home than been a star.

Mueller's victory as best actress in a musical was widely expected, but no less remarkable for a young woman, raised in Evanston in a locally illustrious theater family and cured on the stages of Chicago, whose first Broadway show was only two seasons ago. Not only did she win the Tony, but she performed a duet on television with the elusive King, whose initial reluctance to see the show about her early life changed (after she saw Mueller) into a whole-hearted embrace of the show.

"I forgot to thank everybody in Chicago," said Mueller in an interview with the Tribune late Sunday night.

"But this feels wonderful. It's like the calm after the storm frankly. Now we get to celebrate!"

Robert Schenkkan's “All the Way,” a dramatic account of President Lyndon B. Johnson after he assumed the presidency in 1963, took the Tony for the season's best new play; its tightly wound spring of a leading actor, Bryan Cranston, uncoiled his way into the Tony Award for best leading actor in a play. “Thank you for electing LBJ once again,” said producer Jeffrey Richards, as he collected his Tony, surrounded by the ubiquitous producers, clumped like congressmen for the camera.

Hosted by a bearded, hopping Hugh Jackman at Radio City Musical Hall in New York, the 68th annual Tony Awards made much of the supposed rivalry between Jackman and Neil Patrick Harris, a highly regarded past host who this year found himself, as expected, bewigged at the winner's podium in high heels, the winner of the Tony Award for best leading actor in a musical for his dazzling performance in “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” the Tony winner for best revival of a musical. Harris was missed — the musical numbers this year did not compare with the 2013 broadcast, admittedly a high bar for awards shows. Harris' fans had plenty to enjoy during Harris' performance as Hedwig, a transgender rock star from East Berlin.

Sting, who performed a taste of the title number from “The Last Ship,” a show that begins tryout performances in Chicago this week and will be part of the upcoming Broadway season, had an excellent view of Hedwig as Harris bounced on his knee.

An ill-conceived rap version of “Rock Island” from “The Music Man” notwithstanding, Jackman mostly played it old-school, musical-theater straight, with commercial breaks introduced with faux-intimate backstage scenes and the now-tired award-show trope of stars taking selfies. Jackman introduced the nominees for best actress in a play with a customized rendition of “L-O-V-E,” an introduction for the winner in the category, Audra McDonald, to receive her record sixth Tony Award, replete with an award in every acting category for which she could be eligible. No matter that it was debatable whether McDonald, who won for “Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill,” was in a play or a musical.

“If/Then” used its Tony performance slot to showcase its Tony-nominated star, Idina Menzel, who sounded much better than was the case at the Academy Awards, but they may have been because she was introduced by her correct name. “Rocky,” which wheeled out its boxing ring onto the stage of Radio City Music Hall, also translated well to television, even as the very busy “Aladdin” struggled to play to the cameras.

“The Bridges of Madison County,” a show about illicit intimacy that failed at the box office, won a best score Tony (and a best orchestrations Tony) for its admired composer, Jason Robert Brown, yet the award was not presented as part of the televised broadcast, an indication of how much the Tonys are focused on viewer-friendly celebrities. “After Midnight,” a review of Harlem's Golden Age, provided a showcase for the director-choreographer Warren Carlyle, who won an (off-camera) Tony for his choreography.

Nonetheless, plenty of those achievements were showcased in the glare of the lights. Broadway playwrights (notably all white males of a certain age) had a rare moment in the glare when, in lieu of live scenes, they were allowed to introduce their own plays. Schenkkan did the best job.

“It's a long time between drinks of water in this town,” the veteran scribe would go on to say, after his triumph at the podium.

Lorraine Hansberry's Chicago-based play, the first work by an African-American woman to be seen on Broadway, had an excellent night 55 years later, winning the Tony for best revival. Its director, Kenny Leon, who also won a Tony, praised the late Hansberry, comparing her to James Baldwin and August Wilson. Sophie Okonedo, who won for best featured actress in a play for her work in “A Raisin in the Sun,” gave one of the night's classiest speeches, thanking her colleagues for believing that an Englishwoman of Nigerian and Jewish descent could play “one of America's most iconic roles.”